By Roy Nuhn
Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, a little over one-hundred years ago, the greeting style picture postcard enjoyed immense popularity with Americans. Hundreds of millions of them, including many for Easter, were printed and sold to an eager public during a 15-year span of time leading up to World War I.
Full of dressed rabbits, frolicking chicks, sweet-faced children playing with colored eggs, and pretty young ladies enjoying the delights of spring, Easter postcards quickly became part of the customs and observances of the season. Besides being mailed or exchanged with friends, relatives, and loved ones, they were affectionately preserved in beautiful albums as cherished keepsakes.
Important publishers of Easter postcards included Raphael Tuck & Sons, International Art, Rotograph, E. Nash, and E. A. Schwedtfeger & Co. They and scores of other firms, both domestic and foreign importers, produced huge quantities for the American market.
Tuck, the London-based international giant which maintained a large, very active branch operation in New York City, brought out its first Easter postcards in 1905. These sold briskly, and from 1907 to 1912, the holiday line every year numbered almost 200 six-card sets. These were marketed in three distinct price ranges aimed at fitting every pocketbook. The postcard emporiums in the nation’s large cities and the postcard sections of major department stores everywhere received the most expensive, most beautiful designs, those selling for 25¢ a handsome price for the time. Small variety and retail stores located in every town coast to coast got the ones priced at pennies each or two for a nickel.
Milwaukee’s E. C. Kropp Co. offered a line of over 200 Easter postcards in 1909 and, in New York City, Davidson Brothers reported a tremendous demand for their cards and was anticipating selling record-breaking numbers of them.
Most of the commercially successful American illustrators employed by the postcard industry, whose heart and core was in New York City, did Easter topics. Their ranks included Ellen Clapsaddle, H. B. Griggs, M. E. Price and Gene Carr. Miss Clapsaddle, though, was easily the most prolific. She drew nearly 200 designs for International Art over a 10-year period.
The artistry was filled with lovely women, cute children, colorful Easter eggs, humanized rabbits and scampering baby chickens.
Most top quality cards came in sets of six, eight or 12, though they were usually sold as singles off of the racks. Chickens and rabbits acting like people rank among the loveliest and most ingenious designs used on any holiday postcard. The chickens were drawn using all sorts of transportation vehicles, including dirigibles and automobiles. They also enjoyed rides on carousels made out of eggs. Many cards pictured them dressed in eggshell costumes, living in egg homes, and cruising down streams and rivers on boats and canoes made entire out of eggshells.
Well-dressed rabbits found themselves in similar portrayals, as well as carrying wicker baskets full of colored, hard-boiled eggs; and delivering them to children and adults. The popularity of the child’s game of diabolo, a sort of yo-yo, resulted in several spectacular postcard illustrations showing rabbits playing with the toy.
The religious theme, of course, pervades old Easter postcards, probably more so than any other holiday except Christmas. Large numbers of Easter postcards, some quite beautiful, were filled with crosses, angels and churches.
Among the thousands of different Easter postcards manufactured in the early years of the last century were a number of novelties. While most of the better quality cards had embossing, gilt edging and, on occasion, gelatin overlays, the novelties were another way companies had of enticing consumers to buy.
Novelties included hold-to-lights – cards which when held to a strong light underwent a change in color or scene, add-ons, disk wheel kaleidoscopics, scene changes, and those with silk, plush cushion eggs. Though these innovative postcards sold for a nickel or quarter more than standard stock, they enjoyed brisk sales.
The marvelous medley of colors, illustrations and special effects like gold embossing, and novelties made Easter postcards popular with many collectors. So much was produced in the earliest years of the 20th century that no collection can ever be considered complete. All in all, Easter postcards exert a strong appeal because they help recall the Easters of yesteryear – sweet memories of a bygone time.
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